A MALFORMED GIANT 187 



them in fragments about ; then bricks, stones, rocks, 

 that bury themselves in their heads. Finally, not 

 being able to make an impression on this nightmare 

 of a mob, he kindles a huge fire in one of the towers 

 and piles upon it sheets of lead, and presently two 

 huge gutters vomit upon the assailants a shower of 

 molten metal which is represented as burning them 

 to cinders. In any less vivid imagination than 

 Victor Hugo's, molten lead, after running some 

 distance over stone gutters and falling one hundred 

 and eighty feet through a cool atmosphere, would 

 have resulted in a shower of bullets, — to say no- 

 thing of its burning people to cinders. 



But this is, no doubt, an instance in which he 

 exercises the prerogative of his "imperial fantasy." 



In the same assault a mere youth heavily laden 

 with armor is represented as bringing with celerity 

 a ladder which must have been seventy feet long, 

 and not only carrying it but placing it in position. 

 Quite a feat for a mere youth, what indeed ten men 

 could not do (allowing that a single ladder of that 

 length was ever made, which of course is absurd), 

 but a mere straw to the imperial fantasy of Victor 

 Hugo. It was the same imperial fantasy, no 

 doubt, that kept the naked feet, to say nothing of 

 his half-clad body, of the boy Gwynplaine from 

 freezing in that four or six hours' ramble over the 

 Portland hills through the snow and bitter cold, 

 now on the ice, now in the water, now floundering 

 through drifts, his rags stiff, the icy edges chafing 

 the flesh till the blood comes ( ?). The same fan- 



